I was in the supermarket over the weekend and I was shocked at the variety of bread which is now available for our buying pleasure. Vicki & I visited one of the new Hypermarkets which seem to be popping up on the British countryside like spots on a teenager. I was absolutely shocked at the sheer volume of choice across all product lines. For instance, you can now go to the supermarket, and under the same roof you can buy a new TV or even a car, have your dry cleaning done, book a holiday, have a meal and even develop your holiday snaps. This seems crazy. Not so long ago a supermarket was a place to pick up the essentials, but now the choice is king. The bread stuck out the most though. The bread racks where roughly 30 metres long and 2 metres high. There was brown bread, white bread, best of both bread, no crust bread, sliced bread, traditional loaf, half loaf, super soft and then all this choice was available in multiple brands. What is going on?
Choice seems to be paramount in the modern day commercial economy. I remember when I first got my mobile phone and it was a choice between a brick or a larger brick. Now you can have cameras, video cameras, 3G delivering video to your handset, mp3 players, torches; the list is truly endless.
I guess choice is a good thing. If you take television for instance. There is so much drivel on the television that you need a hundred channels just to risk finding something worthwhile watching. I thank a higher power daily for the invention of the DVD. I love having the choice of my DVD library, on demand, 24 hours a day.I adore the fact that I can pick a movie, watch it in digital clarity with surround sound without leaving my sofa, and even better there is no grain, and no chance of the VCR chewing the tape. But the announcement of Blu ray and the other DVDformat proposed is somewhat annoying. My DVD collection, now in excess of 400 movies, will, like my VHS collection, become defunct. If this happens, rather than ditch the DVD format, Ill be straight down to Currys buying up a selection of DVD players to ensure Ill be able to watch my movies for years to come. The DVD format is fine; in fact I think its perfect, so why change it? The answer is simple, choice! If people dont have choice, they wont continue to buy and replace existing products, which will essentially kill the economy and probably ditch us into recession. So people of the world, rise up, resist the temptation, and damn the man! Save your DVDs
